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Increasing Online Conversions: The Window Shopper Syndrome

Brett Welch - Friday, June 13, 2008
Every business owner wants to increase conversions. Whether it's trying to get browsers in your street level clothing store to buy, or website visitors to add a product to their cart, we're all playing a game of converting browsers into buyers.

Naturally there are some browsers in your shop that are really quite serious and almost ready to buy. And there are also various degrees of browsers. I'm going to bunch all the browsing customers and call them Window Shoppers - ranging from completely uncommitted passers by to browsers in your shop tugging at a new sweater.

Recently I was in a store that I had no intention of buying anything from. As I walked through the store casting my eyes around, I started wondering:

How could this store's owner turn ME into a buyer?

Which leads me to a second thought. If I'm in your store I'm 1000 times more valuable than someone in the street, even if I have no intention of buying today. Why? Because you have my attention. It's your shop, your staff and your message. You should have a pretty good chance of converting me. Maybe not today, but one day. Buying decisions are often cumulative things.

But before we get too deep into this, let's try and get inside the head of a window shopper.

The Window Shopping Syndrome

While this would apply to both online and offline stores, I'm going to focus on ecommerce, or online stores. In this context, a window shopper is someone browsing your ecommerce store.

Window shoppers, the lovable little creatures that we are, share some similarities in the way they think. I've identified two things that are true of online window shoppers (By Brett's hand-waving theory of common sense and reasoning).
  1. They're actually looking for a product they want that you have, but they're not ready to buy yet. This is sometimes called pre-shopping - finding out information and prices etc before the purchase.
  2. They're interested in some information that you have, or just like to look at the latest widget thingy-ma-bob. They're a fan. In any case, they're not buying anything in particular, but you probably sell products or have information that they're generally interested in.
Thankfully when your shop is online your visitors are usually fairly targeted already. You're not so likely to get people wandering onto your website who are just waiting for their tardy friend.

So if that's what they're, how can we keep them happy? How can we convert these browsers into buyers - even though they're not really thinking of buying?

I think there's two things to accept up front:
  • They probably won't buy today.
  • They might buy in the future, but you can't be sure.
With that in mind, we've got to come up with ways so that they remember us when they DO want to buy.

3 Tactics to Increase Conversions: Recruit the Window Shoppers

Use Email Newsletters to Snag Future Customers

Have you got an email newsletter? Throughout your site, think about how you can prominently display your newsletter. Explicitly ask your website users to subscribe to your newsletter.

Use wording to incentivize the sign up - remember, you have to answer their inevitable question "why should I sign up? Phrases like "Sign up to receive updates on our products" are okay, but not as good as "sign up and receive discounts inside our monthly newsletter". Make sure you follow up on these promises though!

Give the Fans Even More Great Content

Search engines love content; so do fans. If you have reviews and comments on the latest iPod, it will be of interest to iPod fans. Write honest reviews of your products. Take photos and post them. Make videos showing you using the product or service if possible, and put them on YouTube. These things make your site a hub of information for people, and make you their top-of-mind store to buy their favorite widget from.

Build a Community

People like to hang out. They like to discuss and post their thoughts. Give your visitors a reason to stay! You can use Forums - why not link your forums to your products, so that people can discuss particular products? Or you could simply enable comments on your online store so that people can tell others what they think.

The 4Cs

Most of these ideas are easily derived out of the 4Cs framework - it's all about Content, Credibility, Conversion and Customer. Remember to keep what your customers are looking for right at the top of your list of priorities, and you'll be heading in the right direction.

Growing Your Business By Solving The Broccoli Problem (III)

Brett Welch - Wednesday, May 14, 2008
I've been writing for the past few weeks on a problem I've called the Broccoli Problem. Broccoli problems are everywhere, and if you want to grow your business, you need to find them and remove them. The classic Broccoli Problem is embodied by my aunt and her son's objection to eating Broccoli:
Broccoli may be good for me BUT it tastes terrible.

Last week I wrote about Removing the Negative - how to remove the problem altogether. This week I'm going to discuss my third strategy: how you can simply embrace the problem and move on.

Embracing Your Broccoli Problem

This is probably my favorite strategy. It's super simple: that guy doesn't like the taste of broccoli, no problems. Just go and find someone who does! This strategy is about finding a better target market - the possibility is that you've just landed in the wrong market, and your product is better suited to another market. 

This one's rather interesting, because sometimes you don't necessarily need to embrace the problem itself, but rather you need to find people who at least  don't care.

Unfortunately though, it doesn't always work; my aunt couldn't exactly go and swap her son. That said, there are many Broccoli problems that can be solved this way.

Think about Diet Cola.

Diet Cola may have less sugar HOWEVER it doesn't taste as good as regular Cola.

You can fix this Broccoli problem by simply finding people who care more about the health benefits and less about the taste. Most broccoli problems can be solved this way, although sometimes it's not optimal to do so. 

Consider every single statement I've written about in the past few weeks - all of them could be solved by embracing the problem. You just need to find the niche of people who care more about the positive side and much less about the negative side. Problem solved.

Fixing your Broccoli Problem

So, what's your broccoli problem? Chances are you have a whole bunch of them and they all sound and look different. The key is to pick out the most commonly repeated ones, the ones that you think are holding your business back the most, and address those issues with the appropriate strategy.

Good luck broccoli hunting. Next week I'm going to end my affair with Broccoli with my final post on the subject - how to choose the right strategy for YOUR broccoli problem. 

Growing Your Business By Solving The Broccoli Problem (II)

Brett Welch - Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Last week I wrote about how you can grow your business by identifying the "Broccoli Problems" in your business. To quickly recap, a "Broccoli Problem" comes about when you're selling your product - the product has an obvious benefit that the prospect accepts. But the prospect also has an objection, which you need to overcome. So for my aunt and her son, the Broccoli Problem is:

Broccoli may be good for you, BUT it tastes terrible.

Now, onto the second strategy for dealing with a Broccoli Problem...

Removing the Negative.

Sometimes you can entirely remove the objection after the "however". This is impossible with Broccoli -my aunt couldn't exactly genetically engineer a broccoli plant to taste like french fries. Generally, you should always consider removing the negativer first, before any other strategy.

Think about this Broccoli Problem:

ABC software will help you grow your business HOWEVER it's difficult to use.

The best way to tackle this one is to remove the "However" factor altogether; fix your software so it's not difficult to use. This requires effort and is difficult and costly, but it's the honest-to-god best solution as well. There is a caveat here however. What about this Broccoli Problem:

ABC software will help you grow your business BUT it's too expensive.

"Ah ha!" one might say, "I can remove that one!" 

Whoa. Slow down Tiger.

Pricing is part of a larger picture, with positioning implications and cashflow impact. Maybe you SHOULD make it cheaper, but be careful - perhaps Repackaging the Negative is more suitable.

Overall, Removing the Negative factor should be considered. These factors (the removable ones) are often the hardest to fix and the hardest to even identify, but they also carry the most rewards.

Next week, I'll move on to the third strategy: Embracing It.

Grow Your Business by Solving The Broccoli Problem (I)

Brett Welch - Wednesday, April 30, 2008
My Aunt Susan, being a good mother, wants her son to eat Broccoli because it's healthy.

My cousin Ben, being a typical boy, doesn't want to eat Broccoli because it tastes bad. 

This gave me an idea, which I'm going to call "The Broccoli Problem". My aunt has very valid reasons to give her son broccoli - it's for his health. But her son resists - also for valid reasons that are relevant to him. The son will say:

Broccoli may be  good for you BUT it tastes terrible. 

Now Broccoli problems are everywhere, always contain a 'However' or a 'But' and are nearly always subjective (you complete the sentences) :

Lower taxes may stimulate a stagnant economy, HOWEVER ...

Your girlfriend may have a wonderful personality, BUT ...

George W. Bush may be a great leader, HOWEVER ...

I'll remain silent on how I'd complete those sentences, but here's where I'm going with this: The Broccoli Problem is a marketing problem that you probably need to think about. Complete this sentence:

Your product/service may be of great benefit to the market, HOWEVER ...

That's why I'm writing this post. Every business has, or once had, a Broccoli Problem that they have to solve. So, how did my Aunt solve hers?

Easy: she diced the broccoli up and baked it into a tasty Lasagne. To this very day, her son still doesn't realize he's eating a plateful of Broccoli Lasagne. 

This is one strategy of dealing with a Broccoli Problem - repackaging the broccoli to counteract the negative after the HOWEVER. I can think of two more strategies and I'm sure there's more:
  1. Repackaging the Negative.
  2. Removing the Negative.
  3. Embracing the Negative.

Repackaging The Negative

This is what my Aunt did - she put the broccoli in a tasty Lasagne, which negated the broccoli's taste while still passing on the health benefit. That's repackaging the negative. In business, a classic case of a repackaging the negative is the age-old payment plan. Think about this Broccoli problem:

The Prius is an eco-friendly, stylish car, BUT I can't afford it right now.

Imagine you're on the car lot saying this to the saleswoman. She'll shoot back "Ah, but have you heard of our payment plans?" By doing this, she's effectively negated your 'however' factor by repackaging the car in an easy to digest payment plan. 

When you repackage something, you're not changing the product itself. You're not changing the broccoli - you're changing the way it's presented, the nature of the deal or how the product is sold. Repackaging strategies nearly always revolve around ideas like:
  • Cost amortization (payment plans)
  • Bundling (selling X + Y + Z together)
  • Splitting (Selling X + Y separately instead of as one)
So you can see we're not changing the product. We're changing the way it's sold. That's repackaging. 

Repackaging a Broccoli problem isn't always the best solution, but sometimes it's the only solution you can feasibly implement. That's where the other two strategies, Removing the Negative and Embracing the Negative, come in.

I'll cover the other two strategies in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

GoodBarry Sponsors An Event Apart

Larz - Tuesday, April 22, 2008

GoodBarry proudly sponsors one of the biggest, and possibly the most star-studded web design conference of the year, An Event Apart. Doesn't matter if you're a web designer, front-end developer or a coder, if you care about web design, web standards, best practices and innovative ideas, this is THE event to attend.

Say hi to Barry and friends at the events listed below:

  1. New Orleans – April 24 & 25
  2. Boston – June 23 & 24
  3. San Francisco – August 18 & 19
  4. Chicago – October 13 & 14

PS. don't forget to pick up your GoodBarry Box of Tricks in the foyer.

GoodBarry at Future Of Web Design

Edward Chan - Wednesday, April 16, 2008
GoodBarry is proud to announce that we will be sponsoring and attending the Future of Web Design conference in London this Thursday and Friday (17-18 April)! 

It's an excellent opportunity for the audience to get some insight into what this group of web-design experts think the latest trends in usability, interface design and business development are within our industry.

As sponsors, we'll have our GoodBarry stand in the foyer. Feel free to come and visit us. There'll be friendly GoodBarryites saying "Hi!" and giving away a useful "Box of Tricks" (Freebies!) which even contains a glossy storybook.

See you at FOWD on Friday!

GoodBarry at BarCampSydney

Brett Welch - Wednesday, April 02, 2008

GoodBarry will be attending and sponsoring the third BarCampSydney! We had such a great time last year, we had to come back for more while supporting the community. Myself and several of the GB team (including Larz, our designer) will be there on the day, and we'll be hoping to run a session or two while we're at it.

So, come along, support the Sydney tech community. You'll learn some cool stuff and meet some cool people.

BarCamp Details

BarCamp Sydney 3: 9am-5.30pm on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 April 2008 at The Roundhouse, UNSW.

Sign up to register for attendance here.

See you there!

GoodBarry Comes a Close Second In Australian Startups Competition!

Brett Welch - Tuesday, March 18, 2008
A few weeks ago we entered a competition for Australian Startups called the Australian Startups Carnival. It's an interesting name, I know - but hey, who is a company named GoodBarry to judge? It sounded like fun (carnivals are always fun!) so we decided to enter. 

Entering meant we had to answer a fair few questions about what we thought it took for startup success, and all entrant's companies were judged on originality, simplicity, technology and marketability. 

It was a close fight for first place, and we missed out on first by nose. Congratulations to Scouta for taking out the top prize! Given the calibre of judges, including blogger Duncan Riley from TechCrunch, future tech Strategist Ross Dawson and IT strategic planner Justin Davies, coming in at such a close second is an honor indeed.

Thanks to Vishal for running the competition, and thanks to the judges for participating!

SEO - 3 Things Business Owners Should Know

Brett Welch - Wednesday, February 27, 2008
I'm not an expert in SEO, far from it. But this week I read a great (repeat, great) beginners document on SEO, and felt there were some great kernels of wisdom in there that are worth sharing in short form. The entire document I read can be found at SEOMoz. Those guys rock - thanks for a great document on SEO.

Background: What Is SEO

Search Engine Optimization is all about optimizing your website so that your potential customers can more easily find you via search engines. Since search engines involve people typing in certain words to find relevant content, and search engines rank popular sites most highly, SEO is about
  • The relevance of your content to the keywords that the searcher has entered
  • The popularity of your site, often measured in links from other sites.
While the practice of SEO is still a little arcane, it seems there's definitely some core concepts that you can stick to reliably - and it's not all about keywords!

Links Matter. But Not Always.

Some think that SEO is all about volume of links to your site and keyword density on your pages. This isn't false, but it's not true either.

For example, not every link is worth the same. A link from a large, trustworthy site like CNN is worth a great deal. But links from known bad sites, such as link farms (where groups of people link to each other for the sake of building link volume) can actually lower your search ranking.

Apparently, links from sites or groups of sites that are considered "subject matter expert" pages by the search engines are worth a huge amount too.

Think About What Would Your Customers Want

Many things cited as SEO advantages are also advantages to your customers. Valid links, working tools, accessible HTML code, fast loading times, well structured navigation, easily found and focused content - they're all good for SEO.

This also all good stuff for your customers, and it helps with SEO for two reasons:
  1. The search engines can find their way around, since the site is well structured and easy to navigate
  2. People are more likely to link to your site if *GASP*... it is ACTUALLY useful and easy to use.
So if you try to make using your website a great experience for your visitors,  you'll find long term SEO benefits too - which is pretty cool, since it makes sense that good sites should be rewarded.

High Quality Is Key

Creating a high quality site that's worth visiting and linking to is a pretty big part of online success, and it's a strength for SEO too. From the quality of your web design to the quality of your content, it all matters. And not always because it matters directly to the search engines, but because it matters to people, and it is people that provide the links that the search engines pay attention to.

So those were three points that really struck me as interesting. Ultimately, it seems to me that SEO could be summed up in a sentence: "Build a really useful, high quality and easy to use site, and you'll get traffic from search engines." Naturally that's pretty simplistic, and it's a huge field and discipline that most business owners will probably need help in (read that guide, seriously).

There are also a number of technical concerns there, which you'll need to learn or get someone to look at. But technical stuff is easy. Creating high quality content is not - so which do you think you should start with?

Aside: We are an SEO Friendly System & CMS - Hooray!

On a final (geeky) note, I was pretty chuffed that with GoodBusiness we've got a lot of the SEO friendly features that SEOmoz.org mentions. For example, 301 redirects on the web page level for duplicate content is there. Friendly, human readable links for blog posts, products and catalogs - check! Google sitemap creation, yep! We've even totally covered the website metrics and analytics they recommend.

Excuse me while I go pat the team on the back =)


Street Cred is for Rappers, Net Cred is ...

Brett Welch - Tuesday, February 19, 2008

What's street cred? The urban dictionary of slang gives us this definition:

Street Cred
Short for street credibility (n) -
repsect(sic) from urban communities. usually something essential for making it big in the rap world.

Now if I may offer a definition of Net Cred:

Net Cred
Short for internet credibility (n) -
Respect from the online community, with tacit acknowledgement that the information or propositions you present online are real and somewhat trustworthy. Usually something essential for making it big online.

Unfortunately, Net Cred isn't really measurable - it's more a feeling people will get when they land on your website.

Think about this: when you're surfing the web, you're often looking for something. It might be a gift for your sister, some information for a project, or news on your favorite singer.

Sometimes you'll find something suitable, but then ask yourself: "Can I trust this website?"

That's when the website's Net Cred comes into play; the more apparent the site's Net Cred is the more likely you will buy the product, use the information or believe the news.

Zooming in on Online Businesses for a moment - for every business, there are some basic building blocks of Net Cred that can be (and should be) used pretty easily. If you are a business owner, here are some things you can add or do to your website to lend a basic level of Net Cred in the eyes of your visitors.

  • Your physical office address. Real companies have real postal addresses - so tell people about it!
  • A phone number. Your customers might not call it, but at least they know they can, if they want to.
  • Watch your spelling and grammar. It's simple, but important. If someone has too many spelling mistakes and poor grammar it's too easy to be dismissed as amateur.
  • Think about presentation. Your website should look good. It doesn't need to be a work of art, but spend some time, effort or money to ensure your site is well laid out and easy on the eyes. Either use a professionally designed template (as our online business builder does) or get a designer to put something together.
  • Make sure your site displays nicely on all browsers. Too many sites only work on Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), and not Firefox or Safari. Websites need to work across IE, Firefox and Safari for mac users - if your site doesn't display correctly to your potential customer, they will not buy from you.
  • Add an About Us page. About us pages are commonly read by people trying to work out if they should trust a company. Make sure you have one! It should tell the prospect 5 important things about your company: who you are, where you are, what you do, why you do it and how you do it.

That's 6 things - and there's loads more, no doubt.

The point is simple: credibility is a huge question when your customers land on your website. You've got to make sure you are communicating your credibility effectively - or you'll lose them lickity split.

 
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